Next Tuesday and Wednesday, join Indiana Forest Alliance (IFA) for the unveiling of this book about a one of a kind forest census!
For the last decade, IFA has worked with a variety of leading scientists to conduct inventories of flora and fauna in a 900 acre tract in the heart of the Morgan-Monroe and Yellowwood State Forest Back Country Area (BCA), as well as a 700-acre tract in the Nebo Ridge area of Hoosier National Forest. More comprehensive than a weekend bioblitz, the inventories are called “ecoblitzes” by scientists because they are establishing a more complete picture over the entire growing season of the biological diversity and ecological value of these older, hardwood forests. This book chronicles the lives of the scientists who did this groundbreaking work in the BCA and are now trying to save this area as one of the largest, highest quality natural areas anywhere in Indiana.
Inventories of flora and fauna in Indiana’s forests are imperative to establish the baseline of current native biodiversity as human activity and the climate crisis ravage the state. Furthermore, these Ecoblitzes are finding life that has never been found in Indiana before. Well over 150 species of insects, spiders, fungi and lichens identified in the Morgan Monroe/Yellowwood BCA Ecoblitz had never been found before in the state and many of these have not yet been identified by experts to the species level. The information gained from the BCA Ecoblitz is proving invaluable to IFA’s prolonged campaign to convince the Indiana Department of Forestry to designate the 2,700-acre Morgan-Monroe and Yellowwood SF BCA as an High Conservation Value Forest.
We are proud to officially release Ecoblitz, an Indiana Forest Expedition at two events next week in Bloomington and Indianapolis. Join us at Morgenstern’s Books and Cafe in
Bloomington on Tues., Nov. 12th at 6 p.m. or The Whispering Shelf in Indianapolis on Wed., Nov. 13 at 6 p.m.
IFA Executive Director Jeff Stant and Dr. Paul Rothrock, one of the top botanists in the country, leader of the plants inventory in the BCA Ecoblitz and featured in the book, will lead an informative discussion about the Ecoblitz and sign copies of the book. Dr. Rothrock was a biology professor at Taylor University for decades and also a research scientist at IU who managed and digitized the famed collection of Indiana plants gathered by world renown botanist Charles Deam from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries at the IU Herbarium.
Based on two floristic quality assessments of the plant team’s results, Rothrock, who has devoted his professional career to evaluating and ranking the quality of natural areas by their plant communities, concluded that the BCA is one of the least disturbed, most natural forest communities in Indiana outranking nearly all of the state’s nature preserves in it’s pristine condition. Dr. Rothrock, IFA and two other top scientists met with Governor Holcomb five years ago to advocate for the preservation of the BCA, and more recently Paul and IFA met with the head of the Indiana Division of Forestry, John Seifert and his staff to press the case for conserving the BCA as a High Conservation Value Forest, (HCVF). An HCVF designation would enable the state to restore this unbroken tract of more than 4 square miles of forest to the old growth condition within a few decades, an objective not possible anywhere else in the state forests.
Do not miss this opportunity to find out about (and purchase) Ecoblitz, an Indiana Forest Expedition, meet one of the key scientists who made the Ecoblitz possible, learn what this endeavor found, and join our efforts to save the Morgan-Monroe/Yellowwood BCA as a High Conservation Value Forest. Click the links above for more information and to RSVP.
We hope to see you there!
